From Robert O. Freedman One of the joys of traveling in the Middle East is the possibility that one can be on the spot to observe the reactions of the residents of the region to important events as they actually happen, instead of being dependent on newspaper or television reporting of the reactions. Thus, I […]

. On June 4, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a much-anticipated address to the world’s Muslims, from a podium at Cairo University. (If you cannot see the embedded video above, click here. The text is here.) The following MESH members responded to an invitation to comment on the speech: […]

From Charles Hill If you put yourself in the position of, say, the political counsellor of the British Embassy in Washington and you were required to send in a pre-Obama-in-Cairo speech analysis, you could draw upon a close analysis of Obama’s words and those of his Middle East team over the past ten days to […]

From Tamara Cofman Wittes The selection of Egypt for President Obama’s long-awaited speech to the Muslim world was not an easy choice, but it is an audacious one. There was no easy option among the various Muslim capitals proposed for the address: a non-Arab capital risked alienating Arabs who view their region as the cradle […]

. On April 6, U.S. President Barack Obama gave an address to the Turkish parliament in Ankara, on the occasion of his first visit to a Middle Eastern country as president. (If you cannot see the embedded video above, click here. The text is here.) In his speech, the […]

. President Obama used the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, to reach out to the Iranian people and the government of the Islamic Republic, promising a new start and relations based on mutual respect. The President stressed the commonalities between Americans and […]

From Robert Satloff There are many sound, intelligent and practical ideas in Kristin Lord’s new Brookings report on reforming U.S. public diplomacy, titled “Voices of America.” These include cross-cutting suggestions for effective public-private partnerships in public diplomacy; bureaucratic improvements, such as appointing deputy assistant secretaries in all regional bureaus at State with specific PD responsiblity; […]